Mary Elizabeth Cronk- Senior Thesis

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HARNESSING THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA:
HOW FOUR FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES UTILIZE SOCIAL MEDIA
by
Mary Elizabeth Cronk
A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Mississippi in partial
fulfillment of the requirements of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors
College.
Oxford
May 2014
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Approved by
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Advisor: Dr. Kathleen Wickham
____________________________________
Reader: Professor Charles Mitchell
___________________________________
Reader: Dr. Samir Husni

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© 2014
Mary Elizabeth Cronk
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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THIS THESIS IS DEDICATED TO MY FATHER.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Kathleen Wickham for her guidance, all of
the selected Fortune 500 executives for their willingness to be interviewed, and
most importantly my family for their love and support.

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ABSTRACT
MARY ELIZABETH CRONK- Harnessing the Power of Social Media:
How Four Fortune 500 Companies Utilize Social Media to Drive Increased Sales
and Optimize Marketing.
The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how Fortune 500 companies use
social media as an effective marketing strategy. The researcher interviewed social
media managers and marketing professionals at the following four Fortune 500
companies in Atlanta, Ga.: The Coca-Cola Company, AT&T, United Parcel
Service and Georgia Power Company. This case study found that executives at
the four selected Fortune 500 companies maintain relevant social media websites
and perceive company involvement as a powerful marketing tool. However,
executives expressed a mutual concern over whether their social media and
marketing efforts yield significant, measurable sales for the company.
(Under the direction of Dr. Kathleen Wickham)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………..vii
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………..1
II. LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………...4
PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY…………………………………...12
METHODOLOGY……………………………………………....13
SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS STUDY…………………………….14
III. CASE STUDY
OVERVIEW……………………………………………………..15
THE COCA-COLA COMPANY………………………………..15
AT&T…………………………………………………………….21
UNITED PARCEL SERVICE…………………………………...25
GEORGIA POWER COMPANY.....................…….....................30
IV. RESULTS…………………………………………...........…..…..34
V. CONCLUSION…………………………………....................…..38
RECOMMENDATIONS………………………………………...39
VI. REFERENCES……………………………….........…………......41

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1…………………………..…………………………………………..…..5
Figure 2..…………………………………………..……………………………..8
Figure 3…………………………..…………………………………..…………..11

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“The most potentially transformative impact of social media is its ability to
encourage brands to marry profit and purpose. The reason brands
participate is that such outreach earns those companies social currency
enabling them to start or participate in conversations that connect them to
consumers in meaningful ways.”
-SIMON MAINWARING
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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
Since the early 2000s, digital advancements have transformed the way that
corporations market and communicate with their consumers. Long before the term
‘social media’ was coined, consumers were participating in online conversation
with and about various companies and their products or services (Evans, 2010).
These conversations often influenced what consumers bought, subscribed to and
even believed in. In the early days of online marketing, very few companies knew
about these conversations and even fewer understood the need to participate.
Companies failed to see that these conversations were much more valuable than
any marketing message could manage (Evans, 2010).
Social media marketing, the process of gaining traffic or attention through
social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, has slowly
taken over how companies market their brands to their customers (Search Engine
Land, n.d.). As companies began to implement new social media-driven
strategies, they were able to better understand their customers’ experiences,
buying habits, and needs (Boone and Kurtz, 2012). Marketing executives were
quick to observe that online conversation was much more intimate and immediate
than traditional methods of communication, and they began to prepare to make
substantial changes. While traditional marketing strategies focused on attracting
customers and closing deals, marketers had to realize that although it is important
to attract new customers, it’s even more important to establish and maintain

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personal relationships with them so that they become loyal, repeat customers
(Boone and Kurtz, 2012). The opportunity to interact with anyone, anywhere,
anytime was too important for corporations to ignore. Social media began to alter
traditional media expectations, and business to consumer interactions became
much more immediate and personal (Merrill, 2011).
The evolution of social media has brought about a wide range of networking
tools that companies are able to leverage to keep up with the fast pace nature of
the digital world. Companies are beginning to see how social media plays an
increasingly significant role in their future business success and in turn are acting
on these changes. Businesses have acknowledged the demand to invest time and
resources into social media, recognizing that their ultimate success depends on
how they will harness the abundance of resources that it has to offer. Thanks to
the proliferation of social media platforms, consumers have more access to and
deeper engagement with a company’s content and brands than they did in the past.
Content that was once only available to consumers via traditional communication
methods can now be delivered to consumers through multiple networking sites
and devices. “This is driving the media revolution and blurring traditional media
definitions,” (Nielson, 2014).
Consumers are now always one step ahead of the game when it comes to
evolving social trends, and businesses must stay in tune with their demands in
order to market products and services to their best potential. Social sites are
becoming increasingly helpful in increasing customer engagement, brand
building, interesting people in products, and increasing sales conversions

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(Forbes). “Social media has taken hold in the business world,” (DeMers, Feb.
2014) because it is one of the easiest ways for companies to reach out to new
customers and market the existing. Thus the purpose of this study is to examine
these relations through interviews and case studies with marketing and social
media executives at four selected Fortune 500 companies.

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CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
The United States is home to some of the world’s largest and most powerful
companies. Every year since 1955, Fortune Magazine has compiled and
published a list of America’s top 500 corporations based on the revenue figures
for each company’s previous fiscal year. The magazine named this group of
companies “Fortune 500” given their size, wealth, and the overall influential role
that they play in the business world (Barnes, Nora, Lescault and Wright, n.d.). For
the past sixty years, Fortune 500 companies have been measured based on their
losses and successes. In the past decade, social media presence has emerged as a
factor in their presence on this list.
Top executives now clearly recognize that active investment in social media
will play a significant role in the future success of their companies. In an online
survey conducted by websites Oracle, Leader Networks and Social Media Today,
which reached over 900 marketing and technology executives, it was found that
97 percent of executive’s top priority is to become socially enabled. In terms of
customer intimacy through social media, 91 percent of executives see an
increased visibility with prospective customers through their social media
business initiatives (Carey, 2014). This study found that organizations who are
putting themselves out in the cyber space are beginning to see significant returns
from these social initiatives, but that transition toward a socially current business
was not easy (Carey, 2014).

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Businesses have acknowledged the demand to invest time and resources in
social media, but many are still in the process of strategizing how to successfully
embed it into their business models. What they are now faced with is the task of
harnessing the abundance of resources that social media has to offer and
integrating the tools into marketing programs to effectively fit their individual
strategies. Social media has the potential to help companies build their brand,
increase customer conversation and increase product and service interest, thus an
increasing number of business executives are taking the initiative to be present on
all relevant and trending social sites (Periasamy, n.d.).
Fortune 500 companies have taken a big social leap in recent years.
According to a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing
Research study on social media adoption among the Fortune 500, top companies
are embracing the new communications tools offered to them. Figure 1 depicts
that in 2013, these business giants increased their use of Twitter for corporate
communications by 4 percent and their use of Facebook pages by 4 percent. 69
percent of these companies use YouTube, up 7 percent from 2012 (Barnes, Nora,
Lescault and Wright, n.d.).
Figure 1
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• 77 percent have active Twitter accounts (up from 73 percent in 2012).
• 70 percent are on Facebook (up from 66 percent).
• 69 percent have a YouTube channel (up from 62 percent).
• 35 percent have Google+ pages.
Many top Fortune 500 companies have undergone substantial marketing
strategy revisions in recent years in order to keep up with evolving social
networking trends. They have had to do so by maintaining effective brand
communication across all mediums. For marketing executives, customer
engagement has long been a part of online marketing efforts. In recent years,
businesses have begun to push this user-generated content onto new social media
platforms, encouraging consumers to share their own stories in a unique execution
in exchange for an entry into a contest. The expanding popularity of social media-
based promotions has forced marketers to find new and creative ways to reach out
to their customers (DeMers, Jan. 2014). Promoting brand awareness and
successfully developing brand personality has always been a top priority of a
company’s early marketing campaigns, but social media has taken the
possibilities to a whole new level.
Walt Disney is an example of a company that has kept its social media
strategy fresh and relevant through the use of user-generated content. Disney,
which ranks #66 on the Fortune 500 list (Fortune), used the social media video
application ‘Vine’ to promote one of its many contests in 2013 (DeMers, Jan.
2014). This is something that no other company had done up to that point. With a
contest titled ‘Vine Your Disney Side,’ the company invited Vine users to create
videos showing their personal Disney side for the chance to win a free Disney
vacation or $1,000 (PR Newswire, 2013). The winning entry not only received a

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trip to a Disneyland, but also $10,000 to create an extended Vine series for
Disney, which in turn further promoted the company to other Vine users. “The
Disney Parks Vine account added to the company’s stable of successful social
media channels that reaches a global audience of 40 million Disney fans
combined,” (PR Newswire, 2013). Businesses took note of Disney and are
beginning to implement new ways in which social media enables the consumer to
act as the marketer.
Ford Motor Company, #10 on the Fortune 500 list (Fortune), is another prime
example of a company that aims to drive real business results using social media.
In 2010 Ford used Facebook to announce the new Explorer to its fans in a new
and unique way. Leading up to the reveal of the new model, Ford posted sneak
peaks, interviews with the design team, and behind-the-scenes looks with the
chief engineer on their Facebook page (Gothelf, 2013). In addition to this effort,
events were held nationwide in which Ford secured earned media as well as
targeted digital ads. Ford completely integrated its marketing team to combine
paid, owned and earned media. “The results: on the day of the reveal, Ford
received 100 million social impressions, 400 million browser impressions, and
reached 66 million Americans,” (Gothelf, 2013).
These success stories findings beg the question: with so many high-profile
companies optimizing social media as a successful marketing tool in terms of
increased consumer interaction, why aren’t all Fortune 500 companies harnessing
the power of social media to their fullest potential? Should not more executives
boost their social media participation with the intention of driving increased

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sales? A 2009 Marketing Industry Trends report explained that the lack of an
established way to measure the effectiveness of social media is the top reason that
companies are not utilizing social media as a marketing tool (Grainger, 2010). See
Figure 2 for a list of some other barriers.
Figure 2
Barriers to Firms Adopting Social Media Marketing Tools
This bar graph illustrates many of
the most serious perceived obstacles
preventing some Fortune 500 firms
from adopting social media into
their marketing strategies.
Figure 2 represents that the top two reasons that companies resist social
media are a) not knowing where to begin and b) the fact that there is no
established way to measure the effectiveness of social media. Another leading
factor is that companies lack the budget to fund social media. A very small

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percentage of Fortune 500 companies do not feel that there are any barriers
preventing their corporation from adopting social media into their marketing
strategies.
There are a variety of reasons that nearly one-third of Fortune 500 companies
across the nation are hesitant in “going social” (Ostrow, 2009). Some marketing
executives have not yet entered the social realm due to fear of the unknown. “The
social media marketing landscape is murky: there are numerous potential channels
available and they don’t all yield the same return on investment,” (DeMers, Feb.
2014). Some faced with little research and no experience, many companies are
taking a wait and see attitude, believing it is not a match for their consumers.
Trends indicate that that is not so. According to the Social Media Today’s Trends
and Predictions of 2014, companies must understand first and foremost that
“social media is not an option.” Businesses must integrate social media into their
marketing plan. It will be expected and will hinder sales if they don’t (Johnson,
2013).
Take Apple, #6 on Fortune 500 list (Fortune), as an example of how a
company that has successfully formed its brand personality without the use of
social media and in return has not experienced any measurable losses. Apple does
not have an official Twitter or Facebook account, and this has not seemed to hurt
the brand’s growth. Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter Group, said “The
truth is, if they didn’t have that momentum going into this new, connected
generation they would have to do it,” he said. “They already had word of mouth
and that word of mouth continues. They already had that momentum”

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(Wasserman, 2012). What Apple seems to prove is that a company can be
successful without dominating social media (Shaughnessy, 2012). In Apple’s
case, the key, however, is the product.
There are also many risks that companies are faced with when throwing
themselves into the social realm. While social media has many advantages, some
large corporations have jeopardized their brand as well as their customer loyalty
in attempt to land the ideal social strategy. The competitive nature of online
chatter has forced some of the top Fortune 500 companies to run into various
ethical controversies in their early attempts to adopt social media as a marketing
tool.
Kmart, ranked #48 on the Fortune 500 (Fortune), fell victim because of a
controversial incident on Twitter following the 2012 Newtown school shooting.
They tweeted, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this terrible
tragedy. #PrayforNewtown #CTShooting #Fab15Toys,” adding a promotional
hashtag after paying their respect (Calderon, 2013). The insensitivity of linking a
call for prayers with a commercial purpose was viewed as appalling on social
media sites and created a negative backlash over its sincerity.
Chris Brathwaite, vice president for media relations and corporate
communications at Sears Holdings, which owns Kmart, issued a comment the
following day, saying, “Kmart used the hashtag #Fab15Toys earlier today to
notify participants of a Twitter chat that it was ending early due to the tragedy in
Connecticut. The hashtag is necessary to notify chat participants of the message.

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This was not used for any promotional reasons.” For many Kmart Twitter
followers, according to businessweek, “it was too little, too late” (Keller, 2012).
The overarching question is how to measure return on investment (ROI) using
social media. According to a report by Huge Inc., without the knowledge
generated by point-of-sale data, regional advertising campaigns or product
placement, it is harder to assess the impact of viral campaigns. Figure 3
demonstrates how businesses must balance multiple, mutually reinforcing tactics
to optimize and monetize the social graph (Gibbs, 2014).
Figure 3
The High-Wire Act
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This graph depicts the desired balance that a company
should maintain between their paid and owned content
in order drive return on investment, according to a
Huge Inc. study on measuring social media success.
As shown in Figure 3, paid media is emphasized as an important step in
building an audience for a company. In addition to paid media, companies must
engage their users through all owned media and keep them involved with the
brand through continuous interaction (Gibbs, 2014). Parallel to this step is the

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need to promote viral content in order to optimize the brand to its fullest potential.
In terms of driving ROI, marketers need to map their social media goals to
specific metrics. Depending on a company’s brand, the metrics could include
anything from net sales, call center value, or increased brand and loyalty. The
final stage in the framework in Figure 3 is demonstrating how paid, owned and
viral efforts supported the original business objectives. Sales must be evaluated
against comparison of individual company values in order to yield results (Gibbs,
2014).
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the impact that social media
has had as an effective marketing tool for four selected top Fortune 500
companies and the implication for executives to move forward. Exploring how
companies use social media to optimize their marketing strategies and generate
increasing revenue is paramount because of its growing capacity in the
marketplace. Academic research is scarce because of its evolving nature.
Professional publications are also just beginning to examine the impact in a
scholarly fashion. This study adds to the growing body of literature on social
media.
This will prove useful to companies who wish to understand how social
media can be utilized to drive sales and optimize marketing. The results from
interviews with four selected Fortune 500 companies will explain the measures
that have been taken in order for social media to be used to each company’s

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advantage. Marketing professionals at the four Fortune 500 companies were asked
following questions by the researcher:
RQ1: Describe your company’s social media strategy.
RQ2: What social media networks is your company currently using? Which ones
have proved to be the most successful?
RQ3: Have your company’s marketing and advertising strategies changed in
result of evolving social and networking patterns?
RQ4: Has your company seen a significant increase in the sales of products and
service since joining social media networks?
RQ5: Has your company run in to any obstacles in rolling out new digital
strategies? How do you deal with competitors?
RQ6: What are your company’s future sales/marketing vision and goals?
Methodology
The researcher interviewed social media managers and marketing
professionals at four Fortune 500 companies in Atlanta, Ga. Interviews were
conducted in January 2014 at their respective offices. The four participating
companies were AT&T, United Parcel Service, Coca-Cola Company, and Georgia
Power Company, one of the four retail subsidiaries of Southern Company. These
four companies differ in terms of the services that they provide and their specific
marketing needs, but are similar in that they were each designated as 2013
Fortune 500 companies by Fortune magazine; this designation is made on an
annual basis and denotes the nations top 500 largest public corporations (Fortune).

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Fortune magazine ranks companies based on their total revenues for their
respective fiscal years (Fortune). The four participating companies are present in
the top 200 on the Fortune 500 list: Coca-Cola ranked #57, AT&T ranked #11,
UPS ranked #53, and Southern Company ranked #171 (Fortune). They were
selected because of their relevance to this study and access to the researcher.
Cross-sectional analyses of these company’s individual social media presence
and marketing strategies were completed after a series of interviews with top
marketing and social media professionals from each organization. The four
companies were selected based on the availability of the sources.
Significance of this Study
This study is significant because it provides insight into the thought
processes, motives, and expectations of the four selected executives toward social
media. It offers a window on how businesses are adapting their business models
and investments in social media innovation and as well as the future thinking of
key decision makers.

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CHAPTER III: CASE STUDY
Overview
These case studies are based on a series of interviews with marketing and
communication executives at four top 100 Fortune 500 companies. As described
earlier, each executive was asked a uniform set of questions to ensure accurate
development and analysis of unique company social media strategies. The data
collected is organized by the four Fortune 500 companies and includes each of the
six core research questions asked by the researcher.
Coca-Cola Company
An enduring classic that has evolved over its 127 years of existence, Coca-
Cola remains the most recognizable—and one of the most valuable—brands in
the world (Interbrand, n.d.). Both of the two Coca-Cola executives that the
researcher interviewed underscored “Brand Love,” getting customers to fall in
love with their brand, as the most important aspect of the company’s social media
strategy.
“We have over 22 million customers, and 3 percent of all beverages
consumed world-wide are Coke products,” explained Alessandra Cascino, Coca-
Cola’s Shopper Technology Manager. “We are moving toward using social media

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to get our huge customer base to fall in love with our brand. Digital is the medium
that we can use to find the gap between the people who love our brands and the
people who are actually buying our products.”
The soft drink giant focuses on building customer loyalty, rather than
improving short-term sales, and measures “brand love” to strengthen its long-term
position (Warc, 2010). Laura Houghton, Coca-Cola’s senior social media
manager, explained, “We want people to feel a personal connection with
everything that we post on social media.” Houghton is one of the many Coca-Cola
employees who believe that the more people who love their brand, the more
people will drink Coke products.
Coca-Cola has achieved an impressive digital presence through its
universally relevant theme that weaves throughout the brand’s communications:
happiness (Interbrand, n.d.). While Coca-Cola is a very conservative brand, it is
still “fast-forward, and always has and always will follow the trends of social
media,” Houghton said.
“Coke is sold in 206 countries, so global sits at the center as far as our
social media strategy is concerned,” explained Houghton. Because the company’s
scope is global, “social media is one of the most complex groups to monitor.”
Coca-Cola’s new approach is “The Hub,” a nervous system connecting 300 front
line marketing personnel to manage and run digital conversations (Greenberg,
2013).

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Before the outbreak of social networking sites in the 2000s, blogs
controlled the digital space. Coca-Cola was one of the many companies that
initially looked to blogs to help kick-start its online presence. “Blogs were our
only means of digital marketing in the early days of social media,” Houghton
explained. While companies have transferred their attention toward other social
mediums overtime, it still finds value in blogs. Coca-Cola refers to its current
blogging strategy as “blogger outreach,” according to Houghton, which is “what
we like to call our ‘Digital Word of Mouth.’”
After blogging came Facebook for Coke. Before big time brands like
Coca-Cola could figure out the legality of social media, fans were creating
Facebook pages for them. Though there are hundreds of pages on Facebook
devoted to Coke, a page created not by Coke’s marketing team but by Dusty Sorg
and Michael Jedrzejewski, a couple of fans from Los Angeles, was the only one
to amass millions of fans (SocialMedia.org, 2009). According to Houghton, when
Facebook started enforcing its policy that only allowed for people authorized or
associated with a company to make a branded “page,” Coca-Cola “collaborated
with Sorg and Jedrzejewski to make the page less of a fan site and more of a
company page.” Sorg and Jedrzejewski still serve as administrators of the page,
along with Coca-Cola’s director of worldwide interactive marketing
(SocialMedia.org, 2009).
Facebook, Coke’s first social media site, is still the company’s largest
social influence with “Fan’s 1st
” being its motto. Coca-Cola’s Fan Page is
currently the #6 most liked and followed Facebook page, and while this is still

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very high, the company was even higher up on the list in previous years
(Laggerty, 2014).
“After Facebook we then expanded to Twitter and Instagram,” explained
Houghton, which each have unique marketing perks. “What Twitter has that other
mediums don’t is key ‘mega influencers,’” explained Cascino, who are the
bigwigs who can make a tweet go viral and have the ability to mold people’s
opinions (Social Samosa, n.d.). On Instagram, Coke can “promote ‘Brand Love’
by re-sharing other users photos, and by posting photos that will appeal to a
smaller group of potential super lovers,” Cascino said. Coca-Cola has plans to
expand its social media presence to utilizing Snapchat, a photo messaging
application. According to Houghton, “Snapchat is still up in the air, but it is a
definite option.”
The growth of social media has created several new communication tools
for companies such as Coca-Cola in recent years. Due to Coke’s global scope, it
has had to change its method of brand delivery. “We are working toward finding
an organic way to geo target our customers,” explained Houghton, so that
customers receive specific advertisements or content depending on their location.
With social media has come a new means of marketing that ceases a
company’s ability to control what is being said about them. “What we are
experiencing is an explosion of conversation, explained Houghton. “Because
social is not a medium that we control, we don’t own the brand, but we can

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participate. The most we can do is respond to our customers and take down things
that may misrepresent us.”
What social media has done is allowed companies like Coke to create and
strengthen relationships with its customers, customers that will in turn buy more
of their products (Warc, 2010). But, according to Houghton, “social media is such
a nuanced area,” so it is hard to pinpoint exact sales lifts. “We have lots of sites
that give us the data and metrics we need to know what works and what doesn’t
work as far as social goes. But what it all comes down to is trial and transaction,”
Houghton explained.
Coca-Cola does not put offers or opportunities for customers to purchase
products directly from its social media websites, a tool that would allow the
company to draw specific sales metrics. But they do use sites such as Datalogix,
according to Cascino, to track the demographics of Coca-Cola shoppers and
measure the offline sales lift that results from various digital advertising and
marketing campaigns (Datalogix, n.d.).
Cascino argues that while they can use social media to drive sales, it is
very preliminary. “A better way for us to use social media is to get our customers
to fall in love with our brand, which ties back to our ‘Brand Love’ strategy,”
Cascino explained.

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The Coca-Cola executives did not report any specific obstacles that the
company has encountered due to implementing new strategies, but did comment
on how they compare themselves to their main competitor, Pepsi. According to
Cascino, “When it comes to our competitors, we work very similarly. We have
everyone beat out on Facebook, but not necessarily on the other mediums. Pepsi
does a lot in the digital space, and they have an advantage in that they are
traditionally much more edgy and in turn have a very strong youth campaign.”
In 2009, Coca-Cola CEO Mukhtar Kent drew up the '2020 Vision' for the
company and its bottling partners, which chalks out a roadmap for doubling
Coke's business in 10 years (Mitra, 2013). This vision gave birth to Coca-Cola’s
vice president of global advertising strategy and excellence Johnathan
Mildenhall’s Content 2020 advertising strategy, which puts content at the core of
its mission: “All advertisers need a lot more content so that they can keep the
engagement with consumers fresh and relevant, because of the 24/7 connectivity.
If you’re going to be successful around the world, you have to have fat and fertile
ideas at the core."
Cascino said that within the shopper technology space, the more
immediate marketing goal is to “crack our customers in the social commerce
space, and to see more customers using their phones to make mobile payments in
our stores.” ‘A Coke in one hand, a phone in the other.’” This is just one of the
many ways that Coke is using social to optimize their marketing strategy.

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AT&T
AT&T has recently experienced improvement in terms of its social media
strategy. The company was just recognized by CIO magazine and
InformationWeek for its ability to communicate with customers in the digital
space. In an interview with Karen Bennett, AT&T’s vice president of mobility
digital experience, she outlined the factors that resulted in AT&T’s marketing
transformation. According to Bennett, “An important tool that social media
presents for us is the ability for our customers to see third-party reviews. Another
is our employee chat service, where we are available 24/7 to answer both
customer care and sales questions to customers online.” In other words, AT&T
has taken social listening to the next level, altering the way that AT&T interacts
with its customers and reducing the time it takes to spot and resolve budding
issues online (SnapTrends, 2013).
“Mobile” plays an important role in AT&T’s social media and marketing
strategy. Bennett explained, “Our marketing strategy has grown in the past year,
because we are now using mobile as a social tool. 50 percent of the traffic to
ATT.com comes through mobile devices.” A large portion of AT&T’s advertising
budget is dedicated to mobile advertisements. According to Bennett, “as far as
mobile applications go, we make use of display ads on various Smartphone
applications to market our products and services.”

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AT&T is active on all relevant social media networks, including
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. The company’s social media pages are
manned by employees, “who've ingeniously managed to combine corporate
communication, marketing and e-commerce” (Slaughter, 2010). AT&T’s two
Facebook pages, AT&T and AT&T Share, have nearly 250,000 likes each, and
serve the purpose of both informing customers of special offers and tips as well as
responding to their needs and complaints via posts (Slaughter, 2010). The
company’s multiple Twitter accounts serve similar purposes.
Like Coca-Cola, AT&T uses Facebook and Twitter specifically to monitor
conversations about the company and to better identify the needs of its customers
– both current and potential – allowing them to build stronger relationships
around the brand (SnapTrends, 2013). According to Bennett, “Social plays a huge
role in our customer care division, our group deployed to respond to our
customers’ posts on both Facebook and Twitter.”
According to Bennett, “For so long, AT&T’s marketing strategy has been
focused on face-to-face interactions with customers. So the most recent task that
we have been faced with is the obstacle of simplifying our products and
promotions so that they work for digital.” Marketing executives have spent the
last decade experimenting with various transition tactics. “For the past 5 years,
AT&T has used social media for servicing purposes. Now we have expanded its
usage to selling products as well,” Bennett explained.

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In 2007, AT&T launched a marketing campaign aimed at meeting the
needs of their customer’s then-mobile lifestyles. Called “Your Seamless World,”
the ad campaign featured mobility services and situations that spoke to the on-the-
go lifestyles of their consumers, both customers and businesses (AT&T Press
Release Archives, 2007). During the several years following the launch of this
campaign, AT&T has had to adjust versions of this campaign in order to better
comply with evolving social media trends.
AT&T’s answer to this question: Yes. “We have definitely seen an
increase in sales of products and services since joining social media networks,”
explained Bennett. In 2011, Sander Biehn, an AT&T employee in B2B (Business-
to-Business) sales, put together a new sales team to rebuild business relationships
with a Fortune 100 company in Atlanta (Biehn, 2013). Biehn explained, “We
decided to take an entirely new approach that heavily favored building
relationships through social media.” This strategy involved putting together
helpful content related to potential solutions for customers, deciding that the
primary source of this new content would be AT&T’s B2B blog, called
Networking Exchange and building a network through Twitter and LinkedIn.
Inside of 18 months, $47 million in brand new business was awarded to AT&T,
directly attributable to social media outreach (Biehn, 2013). This is one example
of the progress that AT&T has made in terms of social networking over the past
several years.

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24
Less than a year ago AT&T was faced with one of the company’s most
controversial situations in the history of the company owing to social media. On
the 12th
anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, AT&T posted an image of the 9/11
Memorial “Tribute in Light” on the screen of a Blackberry Z10 and an
accompanying tagline, “Never Forget” (Buss, 2013). According to Bennett,
“Social media blew up about the ad, which depicted the twin towers on an iPhone,
because they thought that AT&T was taking advantage of the event to advertise
our products.” The company was there to respond the moment that the media
cried out. Bennett explained “AT&T’s response to the controversial ad marked
the first time that AT&T responded on a care end perspective.”
When it comes to social media, a majority of Fortune companies are
taking similar steps and are seeking to remain relevant, innovative and
competitive within the social space. According to Bennett, “I think that we are
investing more in to social media in comparison to our competitors. But
ultimately we are all probably pursuing similar steps based on customer demand.”
As consumers shift a handful of their searches and purchases to online,
AT&T executives have reevaluated their future in terms of retail. “Our CEO’s
2020 objective is for 80 percent of the transactions occurring in our retail stores to
be moved to the digital space. This alone will completely transform the company
organizationally,” Bennett explained.

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UPS
United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) has a multi-faceted social media
strategy that focuses on the ideals of brand communication and customer service.
The company’s digital strategy intends to engage as well as activate its target
audiences which includes employees, customers, shareowners and the media
“When it comes to social media, we have two sides,” explained Brain Pember,
UPS’ customer communications senior manager. “The first side is the traditional
one-way communication aspect, and the second is the customer service side,
which is being used more and more in recent years.”
A strong customer-support system is crucial for UPS, a company that
delivers more than fifteen million packages a day to more than six million
customers (Sernovitz, 2012). The company is beginning to move away from
utilizing social media as a medium to advertise their brand and is directing more
attention to responding to what customers need. “Most of our messages sent
through social media sites are marketed toward responding to the customers who
are voicing complaints and needs,” explained Pember.
According to executives, UPS has stuck with its traditional advertising
method and uses only the inexpensive tools that social media channels have to
offer. “We use brands as publishers, and utilize the most cost effective channels
within social media, like LinkedIn,” Pember explained. Because money is a
concern, LinkedIn is UPS’ prime marketing channel within the social space.
“LinkedIn gives us the opportunity to target and focus in on different segments,

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which allows for a deeper level of business conversation,” Pember said. In order
to save money, the company has begun to boost its organic content on social
media, which includes posts, inmail and display ads.
While UPS focuses its social media efforts on LinkedIn, it also uses social
media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to listen to complaints and in turn
answer them. “We use these sites as listening channels and evaluate what our
customers are expressing rather then creating conversations with them,” explained
Pember. “Twitter is much more effective when directed at a narrow group
because they will respond and relay their satisfaction.”
Social media channels thus allow UPS to collect business intelligence as
to what they are doing wrong and how they can improve different sides of the
business (Social Media in Business, 2012). “Before social media, we were making
broad brand changes rather than channel changes,” explained Maureen Healy,
vice president customer communications for diversity and marketing at UPS.
“Now, we change advertizing techniques and strategies through evaluating
customer responses to social media and then implement changes all across the
board.”
UPS has had a Facebook page since the birth of the networking site.
According to Pember, UPS was one of the first companies to form customer
relationships via Facebook. “Unlike Coca-Cola, we created our Facebook page
ourselves instead of by our fans,” explained Pember. “We realized that if we

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didn’t make the initiative to quickly take control, our customers would have
created our voice for us.” The company also maintains a YouTube channel, and,
as previously mentioned, a Twitter and LinkedIn account.
UPS has seen the most success in focusing social efforts by directing
messages to narrow groups rather than its extended public. “The upside of
targeting our message to smaller groups of people is that we are able to receive a
higher level of response,” said Pember. Closing in on different segments allows
UPS to establish deeper connections, something that it has found most
manageable on LinkedIn. This is why LinkedIn, as mentioned in RQ1, is UPS’
prime channel that yields the most success for the company in terms of
communication with its customers and various businesses.
Unlike many Fortune 500 companies, UPS has not been influenced by
social media to make substantial changes to its marketing and advertising. “Our
advertizing strategy is still traditional,” Pember explained. “We spend little
money on social because we have found that the response is far more effective
this way.”
The thing that UPS has lost control of one-way communication that
traditional marketing and advertising once allowed them to do. Because of this,
according to Pember, “UPS’ strategy is now based on content marketing, which
means being more targeted in the areas of ‘who’ and ‘what.’” As previously
mentioned, UPS has begun to target specialized groups across its social realm in

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order to effectively communicate with its customer base on a more personal level.
“We have been experimenting this year, and we have reorganized our audience
into 8-9 strands so that we can be specific and target certain groups,” Pember said.
Executives at UPS are not sure if social media is driving increased sales
for the company. “We are sometimes sure that social media results in a sales
transaction by tracing leads and customer actions, but in most cases it is more
nebulous,” explained Pember. Like other Fortune 500 companies, UPS uses free
analytical tools provided by sites that evaluate the number of “likes” a post gets
on Facebook and the number of people who “retweet” their tweets on Twitter.
The question has always been: does any new marketing strategy generate
revenue?
At a panel discussion with technology executives from leading companies
at the Economist CIO Agenda in New York, UPS Chief Information Officer Dave
Barnes discussed the mutual frustration that UPS shares with other companies in
breaking down the money being brought in by social media sites (UPS Pressroom,
n.d.). “Not all these can be articulated in the ‘we invest X dollars showing X
money back’ sort of way,” explained Barnes. Barnes continued by predicting that
once social media strategies are defined across the board, UPS will be able to
make sense of them in terms of business success and quality. “Just as soon as you
find the rules and know what your strategy is, the benefits will be established
through the metrics and you’ll see true business value” (UPS Pressroom, n.d.).

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UPS has reorganized its social strategy in recent years, dividing its target
audience up into eight to nine strands for increased responsiveness. Because of
this, executives have faced the challenge of delivering homogenous content and
messages. “The challenge for us is staying consistent,” explained Pember. One
reason for the ambiguity in their strategy can be related to the large scale of the
company. UPS is the world’s largest small package company, operating in 200
countries and territories and serving a wide range of customers – from the
smallest businesses to the largest businesses, from small entrepreneurs in the
United States to emerging entrepreneurs in India and China (UPS Pressroom,
n.d.).
Barnes’ thoughts on this issue compare to those of Pember. His solution
to the conflict of consistency is to send customized messages to customers
without becoming bureaucratic. According to Barnes, “We have to manage
complexity of scale . . . We handle 15 million plus packages a day but we still
have to be able to do it in a way that it looks like we’re doing it just for you rather
than you’re just one of many” (UPS Pressroom, n.d.).
Establishing equilibrium between effectiveness and affordability is
another challenge for UPS’ social strategy. “There is the perception that social is
free, but there is a large money component,” explained Healy. UPS has chosen to
boost its use of organic content accessible on social sites rather than spending

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extra funds on extravagant media campaigns like other Fortune 500 companies
have undertaken.
UPS hopes to reach large-scale employee involvement in the coming
years. According to Pember, “Our goal is to leverage massive numbers of
employees on social media. We are specifically shooting to have 400,000
employees actively participating in LinkedIn in the near future.” The more
digitally present employees, the more available opportunities for the company to
answer the many needs of its one million plus customers.
Georgia Power
Georgia Power Company the largest subsidiary of Southern Company, an
Atlanta-based energy company serving the Southeast (National Business
Coalition on Health, n.d.). The utility company serves 2 million customers in all
but four of Georgia’s 159 counties (MoveGeorgia, n.d.). Georgia Power’s social
presence has long focused on crisis communication rather than the promotion of
new services. According to Stan Pollard, Georgia Power’s Director of Electronic
and Creative Media, “Our social media strategy is largely focused on branding
and outage communication.” The company’s brand messaging includes content
that highlights its four key brand tenets: value, service, reliability and
stewardship.
Safety goes hand in hand with Georgia Power’s four core tenants. “We are
unique in that we have a huge responsibility for public safety,” explained John

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Kraft, the media relations and social media manager at Georgia Power Company.
“As a result, safety takes up a huge part of our social media activity.” In addition,
Georgia Power leverages its social media platforms to communicate the vest
amount of resources available to customers who experience an outage.
Facebook and Twitter are Georgia Power’s most frequently used and
monitored social media sites. Customers interact with the company the most
during power crises. “We get the most buzz during storms and power outages,”
Kraft explained. “However, we do have a small customer service team that helps
out with social media, but responses are not always timely.”
Georgia Power also has a YouTube channel that contains various “how-
to” and construction update videos intended to help keep customers aware and
informed. Although the company’s YouTube site contains valuable content, it
lacks the immediacy and informational value that can be obtained by customers
through both their Facebook and Twitter pages.
Georgia Power has yet to establish the push-pull marketing strategy that
many Fortune 500 companies have already implemented and mastered.
“Resources limit us to only “push” messages versus developing an engagement
strategy,” explained Pollard. “Both Facebook and Twitter have been “equal” in
terms of being leveraged to push our brand messages.”

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The types of interactions that long occurred through Georgia Power’s
social media websites were connections between their company and the statewide
news media. These conversations concerned outage and crisis communication,
with a tertiary focus on brand building, something that has taken off in recent
years. “Our current social media strategy is less focused on marketing and sales
and more on brand building, customer relationships and customer service in a
growing sense,” Kraft explained.
Pollard agrees with Kraft in that social media allows Georgia Power to
push brand messages to customers, but acknowledges that the company has yet to
see significant changes as far as their marketing strategy goes. “Our strategies
have not changed outside of us recognizing the need to be “active” on the social
media platforms,” explained Pollard. “ Our customer care and public policy
advocacy needs are not being addressed.”
Georgia Power has not attempted to measure the sales success. According
to Pollard, they are unable to evaluate the relationship between social media usage
and sales because “We have not fully leveraged social media to generate sales.”
The biggest obstacle that Georgia Power has faced in rolling out new
digital strategies lies in the traditional skill sets of the folks currently managing
new social media channels. “The skills required for traditional channels (writers,

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reporters, and media interviews) are quite different from what is required of the
new digital channels (channel expertise, technology expertise, monitoring and
listening, search engine optimization and social media engagement),” Pollard
said. Because the tools required to manage digital channels differ from those
skills necessary to handle traditional media, social media executives at Georgia
Power are experiencing a loss in terms of social success.
One of Georgia Power’s faults lies in their ill-timed responses methods.
“Our customers contact our Twitter and Facebook accounts the most during
storms and power outages, times when a majority of our company is out on the
field helping to physically solve the problem at hand rather than managing social
media,” explained Kraft. Georgia Power have a small customer service team that
helps out with social media during crises, but, according to Kraft, “the team’s
responses are not always timely.” The company is the only utility company
serving the state of Georgia, so competitors are not an issue.
Georgia Power executives hope to see significant marketing and sales
growth within their social media sites in the upcoming years. According to Kraft,
“In 5 years, I would like to see growth in the PR/brand building area as well as
customer service, where I hope that social media can branch out to be a free-
standing source for our customers.”

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CHAPTER IV: RESULTS
This section reports the specific conclusions that the researcher gathered
based on the individual case study interviews. Each of the four Fortune 500
companies represents the subheads of the chapter.
Coca-Cola Company
Social Media and Marketing Optimization
Coca-Cola Company sees “Brand Love” as its prime social media vision.
The company optimizes its marketing strategy by posting content that will get
customers to fall in love with their brand. Marketing and social media executives
believe that getting customers to love the brand that they deliver in the digital
space is what allows them to establish personal and long-term connections with
both current and potential customers. It can be concluded that Coca-Cola
executives spend more time on enhancing their individual strategies rather than
comparing it against key competitors.
Sales Driven by Social Media Use
Coca-Cola uses sites such as DataLogix to obtain the data and metrics they
need to know what works and what doesn’t work as far in terms of their social
strategy. Rather than emphasizing short-term sales generated by media
campaigns, Coca-Cola focuses on building customer loyalty and promoting
“Brand Love.” Coca-Cola employees believe that the more people that love their

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35
brand, the more people that will drink Coke products. The immeasurable
correlation between Coke lovers on social media and the purchases that they make
in the store is where the company struggles to draw sales in terms of numbers or
percentages.
AT&T
AT&T differs from other Fortune 500 companies in that they use social
media to promote product sales as well manage customer service. They use
advertisements as their main social tool, dedicating a large portion of their
marketing budget to implementing display ads on both social media websites and
mobile applications. The other way that they optimize their marketing social
strategy is by having employees available 24/7 to answer both care and sales
questions to customers online. AT&T’s success resonates in customer satisfaction
and the promotion of their products and services.
AT&T has executed new marketing techniques in recent years that have
proved that increased sales were generated through usage of social media. One
way that they proved the direct correlation between social media and sales was
through a B2B sales campaign implemented in 2011. This strategy was aimed at
providing potential solutions for customers, through a Networking Exchange blog
and a Twitter and LinkedIn network. AT&T was awarded $47 million in brand
new business eighteen months after this campaign was launched. This amount
was directly attributable to their social media outreach (Biehn, 2013).

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36
United Parcel Service, Inc.
UPS has a multi-faceted social media strategy that focuses on the ideals of
brand communication and customer service. The company optimizes its digital
strategy through the engagement and activation of their target audiences, which
includes employees, customers, shareowners and the media. Because of the vast
nature of their customer base, UPS finds that focusing in on specific segments of
people allows them to establish deeper conversations and ultimately more
valuable relationships. The company also uses social media as a listening channel
to evaluate how their customers perceive their services. UPS thus optimizes social
channels by collecting business intelligence into their operation and making
changes according to public opinion.
The shipping company has not been able to track whether or not social
media usage has resulted in an increase in overall sales for the company. UPS has
found success in assessing the role that social media plays in a sales transaction
through tracing leads and customer actions, but in most cases the correlation
between social media and sales is indeterminable. UPS uses free analytical tools
provided by sites such as the evaluation of the number of “likes” a post gets on
Facebook and the number of people who “retweet” their tweets on Twitter, but
these are numbers are unrelated to sales.
Georgia Power Company

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Georgia Power Company optimizes its marketing strategy by providing
customer service to all citizens whom receive power throughout the state of
Georgia. Because the utility company has an immense responsibility for public
safety, they utilize social media to deliver storm and power outages updates as
well as answers to any questions and concerns customers may direct their way. Its
social media strategy is also largely focused on branding and outage
communication, which includes highlighting its four key brand tenets: value,
service, reliability and stewardship.
As mentioned above, Georgia Power has a limited number of products
available for purchase online; therefore revenue is inconsequential to their social
media purpose. Georgia Power has not been able to measure the sales driven by
social media use because they have not yet fully leveraged their channels.

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CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION
This case study found that executives at the selected four Fortune 500
companies collectively maintain relevant social media websites and perceive
social media as an important marketing tool. Each of the participants that were
interviewed recognized the demand for their company to stay in tune with social
trends and the impact that digital involvement has on their ability to market
products and services to their best potential.
The four marketing executives collectively observed that social media
allows for intimate and immediate conversations with customers that were not
found in traditional methods of communication. The move from traditional, one-
way customer interactions to two-way communication made possible through
social media networks has allowed executives to use sites like Facebook and
Twitter as listening channels through which they can evaluate what their
customers are expressing about their company, thus increasing their business
intelligence. Participants also acknowledged the opportunity that social media
presents in terms of increasing brand awareness and customer loyalty.
Being active on social media is no doubt an effective and critical choice of
action for Fortune 500 companies. While the four participating executives
acknowledged social media as a pivotal element of their marketing strategies, they
shared a mutual concern over whether or not their strategies generate significant,

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measurable sales for the company. As previously mentioned, the top reason that
marketing professionals are refraining from involving their companies in the
social media stratosphere is because there is no established way to measure its
effectiveness (Grainger, 2010).
The barrier that executives are facing is the complex task of measuring the
ROI from their social media campaigns. While it is important to know exactly
how much worth social media marketing is bringing to a business, it can be
difficult to know the exact numbers (Morgan, 2013). Whether or not social media
participation generates significant sales for a company has not been confirmed,
but executives continue to make use of standard analytical tools in order to
measure customer responses to their brand and marketing campaigns within the
medium.
Recommendations
To Future Researchers
The qualitative, in-depth interview method used by the researcher was the
most appropriate method for this project. The assemblage of scholarly questions
that the executives were asked secured critical insight into how social media,
marketing and communication professionals at the four Fortune 500 companies
use and measure social media efforts.
The multifaceted and complex nature surrounding the subject of social
media proves that a larger pool of interviewees could be more effective in
penetrating the topic and yielding more specific results. In addition to the
evaluation of more Fortune 500 executives, more questions involving numerical

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data and statistics could be asked by future researcher to further the preciseness of
the study.
To Fortune 500 Companies
It is recommended that companies, not just Fortune 500 companies,
consider the following:
• Identify a distinctive social media strategy that embraces company values
• Maintain an active presence on all relevant sites
• Establish consistent brand delivery amongst all sites
• Ensure site managers are prompt and represent the company’s core values
• Aim for large-scale employee participation on social media sites
• Continue to prove out ROI models for all social media campaigns

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